Early this spring, Edith Gillis jumped at the chance to tend a community garden plot with her neighbors. Their Earl Boyles Community Garden was a verdant oasis in the heart of the struggling Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood.

Each of the 16 garden plots tucked in the shadow of Kelly Butte in Southeast Portland was snapped up almost immediately and became bountiful, thriving monuments to summer.

But Gillis arrived at 6 a.m. Wednesday to find half the gardens leveled by vandals. "I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach," said Gillis, a mother of two. "I can't afford to buy this food at a grocery store."

In her 35 years as director of community gardens, Leslie Pohl-Kosbau had never seen anything like it: wooden trellises shattered, cornstalks cut down and trampled, tomato plants ripped out by the roots.

Torsten Kjellstrand/The OregonianLynne John and her son Chris, 12, were devastated to find their vegetable plot leveled by vandals at the Earl Boyles Community Garden in the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood. John and six other families tended the plot started by elementary school students. Among the vegetables they lost were potatoes, artichokes, zucchini, green beans, carrots and lettuce.

Vandals had struck the garden several times during the week, but in the wee hours of Tuesday they wrought the most damage. "They took some tools that were stored there and chopped the heck out of the gardens," says Pohl-Kosbau, who works for the Portland Bureau of Parks & Recreation. "It was wanton destruction."

Water spigots were turned on full blast and left to flood the gardens for hours. It was the fifth -- and most devastating -- strike since late April.

Neighbors who witnessed the vandalism refused to talk, saying they feared retribution.

Gillis, like many at the garden, relies on her plot to supplement her family's diet. Without the fresh corn, tomatoes, beans and squash she grows, she and her two children would eat little more than rice and beans, she says.

"I haven't been able to afford fresh corn in years," she says.

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Community gardens in low-income neighborhoods are especially critical for families living on the edge of poverty, says Pohl-Kosbau. But the destruction at peak harvest was also an emotional blow to those who saw the garden as a source of community as well as sustenance.

"It hurt us more than simply having less food to feed our families, money stolen from our limited budgets, worse than time stolen and wasted," says Gillis.

The Earl Boyles Community Garden is one of 32 community gardens administered by the city. This fall, three more gardens will open as the city scrambles to keep up with demand. To date, there is a waiting list with more than 1,000 names, says Pohl-Kosbau.

Some gardeners may just give up, since it's so late in the season. Three generations of Russian women who tended an impressive plot overflowing with beets and potatoes was hit especially hard. Another, equally devastated plot was tended by fourth- and fifth-grade students at Earl Boyles Elementary School.

"They targeted the ones that were the most cared for," says Jack Camp, who tends a garden here with his fiancee, Joy Hopkins. After a long, hot summer of tilling, weeding and tending, Camp and Hopkins lost 30 stalks of corn, along with broccoli, tomatoes, cauliflower, arugula and poblano peppers, all of which will be impossible to replace this year. "I just felt so violated," said Camp. "The tomatoes were just starting to ripen, so to have them gone is just really sad."

Others, like Lynne John, who helps maintain the school's plot, was reeling from the shock of seeing the students' hard work wiped out overnight.

Her 9-year-old son, Eli, had grown vegetables there as part of his science curriculum. "Now there's nothing left," says John. "My son asked me who would do such a thing."

She had no answer.

To help with cleanup or to donate vegetable starts, garden tools and produce to the Earl Boyles Community gardeners, contact the Portland community gardens office at 503-823-1612.